Group of States against Corruption publishes report on
“the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”

Press Release

Strasbourg, 30 August 2010 – The Council of Europe’s
Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) published today its
Third Round Evaluation Report on “the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia”, in which it finds a lack of effective implementation
of the rules of party financing and the need for some legal
improvements in the criminalisation of corruption.

The report focuses on two distinct themes: criminalisation of corruption
and transparency of party funding.

GRECO identified, however, some aspects of the law which fall short of
the standards under review, including several loopholes in the trading in
influence offence; the narrow range of possible perpetrators of private
sector bribery and the requirement of dual criminality with respect to
corruption offences committed abroad. It also stressed the potential for
misuse involved in the defence of ‘effective regret’, which can be invoked
when an offender reports a crime after its commission.

Concerning transparency of party funding [hyperlink to theme II report],
GRECO stresses that, although the relevant legal framework of “the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” is well-developed and contains a number of
strong features, there is in practice a lack of effective implementation of
the rules on political financing. GRECO points out that this problem can be
attributed to an extremely scattered and overall inefficient system of
external supervision.

This, in turn, results in possible infringements to political financing
rules not being prosecuted and ultimately sanctioned. Likewise, it is
crucial for the credibility of the system that election expenditure limits
are duly respected in practice, in particular, by establishing an adequate
financial reference period during election campaigns, as well as by ensuring
that goods and services granted at discount prices are properly identified
and accounted for.

The report as a whole addresses 13 recommendations to “the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. GRECO will assess the implementation of
these recommendations, in the second half of 2011, through its specific
compliance procedure.